In the bookstore I work at, we sell copies of Infinite Jest.

As someone who was once an English major, and who now works in a bookstore, I spend and have spent a lot of time reading people. Let me tell you something about the customer who comes in the store asking for a copy of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest.

He will likely admit to being an asshole and act seemingly apologetic. Or maybe he’s honest about his asshole nature. Regardless, he believes it to be a good thing. A customer (of any demographic, but very likely male at the least) who exposes himself as an asshole will always secretly believe it’s a positive attribute, whether he lets you in on that secret or not. Hopefully, for both of your sakes, he saves you the time and chooses the former.

He is also probably the customer who asks for the location of Dostoevsky’s collection, talking your ear off about the brilliance and the ephemeral quality of Russian literature, all the while excusing himself, saying, “I didn’t know whether you’d have Dostoevsky shelved under general fiction or in the classics section, so I figured I’d ask.”

He walks with his head slightly down, inquisitively listening while pondering your character. Too decisive, overly opiniated, he thinks. Attractive, but destructive towards anything that blocks her path. Inconvenient for the assholes of the world.

I’ve come across many of these obsessive, Russian literary fanatics. Two in my romantic life, and too many to count in every other aspect of my life. If there’s one consistency among Russian literary fanatics it’s that they will make themselves known, whether in an appropriate place like a bookstore, or an inappropriate place like the lines to the restrooms of the club you literally just met at. Usually revealing himself by proxy (his thoughts on the DJ and how this isn’t his usual music taste, lyrical and literary greats and all that).

The obsessive Russian literary fanatic, the infinite jester if you will, is probably the worst of the male literary archetypes.

There’s also an adjacent Great American Novel chaser. This is the boy who read an Ernest Hemingway book in high school and finally felt seen. Somewhere along the way, a woman castrated this young man, leaving him emasculated and yearning. His other parasocial relationships include John Steinbeck, James Joyce, and Herman Melville.

He feels that he, too, could create the Great American Novel. He, too, could write of better pastures, of a tortured soul, and all in the raw and fearlessly written language of his own soul. Never afraid of using the right words, all the words even, every word he knows.

Don’t fret, I like John Steinbeck and even a little Herman Melville. I’m fascinated by Tolstoy and am interested in dabbling in Dostoevsky and maybe a bit of Gogol. That’s what pulls me to these men. It’s how their fishhooks dig into my skin, piercing a hollow portion of me somewhere and injecting me with a dose of satisfaction for my curiosity.

I can’t be self-righteous in all of this, for at least I still have a heart and the ability to empathize. Some might categorize me as the modern woman, the contemporary lit-fic obsessed female writer searching for a voice that replicates her own, speaks for her. The Ferrante Freak, The Morrison Madwoman, The Lispector Inspector. Damaged and disillusioned, she, like her male counterparts, is yearning.

And perhaps, of all the archetypes for women, a contemporary woman is the worst, just as the Russian obsessed is of the males. I fold the front cover of my paperbacks back so I can hold my book in one hand. I chew on the ends of my pens when I’m not permitted to speak, but my mouth needs something to do because I’m not capable of shutting up. I also think my jokes are funnier than everyone else’s.

Maybe the best of all the archetypes is the nonfiction reader. The one who reads books about habit tracking and the Vietnam war. The person who takes information and uses it to drill into the world, externally instead of internally. The person whose nose is in the air, sniffing and scanning, assigning an association to an object, a solution to a problem, and then moving on.

Or maybe we are all a little bit of everyone, leaning into what we feel capable of leaning into and running at the pace that we feel we can comfortably breathe at. There are no apologies to be made or asked for. There’s empathy to be shared and acknowledged, and sometimes that doesn’t happen. Regret might spark, anger might blaze. It’s whatever.

Just know, if he asks you what you know about Infinite Jest, just smile and nod and then never call him again.